The Dream Chasers by Claudette Oduor

[One]
    A WEEK BEFORE MAMA THREW the butcher knife at me, she and I sat at the veranda, sorting pishori rice that she was to cook while I was at church. We picked the shiny little stones that hid within the rice, pushed them to one side of the tray, and slid the clean rice to the other side of the tray. When the clean rice became a mound, Mama poured it into a basin.
    We worked silently: four hands, four eyes, tightly drawn lips, beads of sweat building up on two protruding foreheads, and a dozen threads of thought spinning in two minds. A few feet from us, the fresh laundry hanging on the lines surged this way and that, throwing spray on the concrete slabs on the ground. Chickens roamed freely in the yard, pecking at worms and baby lizards, dismembering them, and swallowing them. A mother hen broke crumbs for its chicks. A turkey tore apart a banana peel and ate it. Two geese walked up and down the laundry area.
    If the clothes hung low enough, the geese would latch their orange beak onto them and suck their water out, muddying them with their dirty bills. But the clothes were too high up now, so they patrolled up and down, waiting for the moisture to go drip-drop on the concrete slabs below. They ran and caught the droplets before they hit the ground. The geese weren’t thirsty; they just liked to play.
    Mama was like the mothers illustrated in the Hadithi Njoo children’s storybooks; they always wore a simple gingham dress that erased all the curves from the body and drew straight lines in their place. When I was younger, I had wondered what would happen if she wore something attractive. Would Baba have loved her more or would she have been so startlingly different that I wouldn’t have recognised her?
    Mama’s voice interrupted the dribbling of the laundry water, the clucking of the mother hen, and the swoosh of rice falling from the tray to the basin.
    â€œChinika,” she said, her eyes trailing over the veranda, over the little silver spears at the top of the perimeter fence, over the pine tips to the twirling cappuccino clouds in the sky.
    â€œMama,” I replied, and touched her hand, the hand dusted with rice powder. She pulled her hand away, upsetting the tray. Rice scampered across the floor, across the ridges of our toes, and across her flip-flops. Mounds of stone and rice debris fell into the basin of clean sorted rice. “Mama?”
    She stood up, shoving the empty tray into my hands. Rice grains ensconced in the pleats of her dress jumped to their death on the floor. “It’s the hunger,” she said, wiping her brow, spreading rice dust across her forehead. “It’s making me disoriented. Let’s go have breakfast.”
    We ate boiled maize and bread with tea.
    Mama was wrong. The hunger did not disorient her; it was her episodes. They were back. I didn’t see them coming, although I should have. They crept on the balls of their feet and threw acorns on the windows of Mama’s mind, waiting as she flung those windows open to let them in. Mama forgot to shut the windows after that; she let the draft in as well. The draft hurled her wits about like linen on the clothesline.
    Mama reached over for a slice of bread, holding a butter knife over it. She didn’t cut it; her mind hovered over the knife. She caressed it, her fingers delicately running over the edge of the shiny silver.
    â€œMama?” I pleaded.
    She dropped the knife on the table. It fell down with a gentle thud. Pub ! It made my teacup shake, making little waves in my tea.
    â€œGo, Lulu,” Mama said. “Go to church.”
    Muchai, a childhood friend, waited for me at the matatu stage. We took one of the public-utility vans to town, got off at Times Tower, and then walked to the basilica. Mass had already begun. The church was filled, so we stood at the back among other shamefaced late faithful who didn’t look each other in the eye, even when offering each other a limp,